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“Warp and Weft”, a very large and exceptionally
beautiful Navajo Abstract Modernist Oil and Latex
on Canvas painting by Tony Abeyta, 2009
Contemporary Navajo artist, Tony Abeyta (b.1965) is on a serious and continuing roll the past two decades.
He has had a major, one-man Museum exhibition on display in Arizona which followed fairly closely on the heels
of his significant participation in another major exhibition at The Heard Museum in Phoenix. Abeyta was also the 2012 recipient of the New Mexico Governor’s Excellence in the Arts award, and was further recognized that year with
a Native Treasure “Living Treasures” award by the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture in Santa Fe where he was also awarded a honorary Doctorate degree. Tony also received the prestigious Gene Autry Memorial Award in 2018 from the Autry Museum of the American West. And, in 2023, The United Stated Department of State's Office of Art in Embassies honored Tony Abeyta with the 2023 U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts at the White House in Washington, D.C.
Tony Abeyta’s work can be found in and is avidly pursued by significant Museums and private collections across the country and around the world from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. to the Denver Art Museum, Boston Fine Arts Museum, New Mexico Museum of Art and a great many others. The reasons for all this attention and acclaim are plain to see. Abeyta’s work is extraordinary in its consistently high quality and wide-ranging in its originality, scope and ambition; from abstract to realist from traditional subject matter to complete Modernist abstraction. This particular painting is a perfect storm so to speak, an extraordinary combination of Abeyta’s conceptual and cultural framework and his extraordinary virtuoso painting talents in a single work.
Tony Abeyta pictured with former U.S. Interior Secretary, Deb Haaland, c. 2022.
Photo source and © Tony Abeyta.
Tony Abeyta in his Santa Fe painting studio.
Photo source © and Navajo-Hopi Observer
“There exists a rhythm in the land where I was born. I spend a lot of time deciphering the light, the cascades of mesas into canyons, the marriage between the earth and sky and the light as it constantly changes at whim, the intensity of rock formations, and the sage and chamisa that accent this poetic experience, unlike anywhere else I have seen. I am beckoned to remember it and then to paint it.”
-Tony Abeyta
At center, a Navajo woman at her loom weaving a historic Navajo textile, c. 1920. At right, a historic Navajo "wedge weave" style blanket, c. 1900.
Center photo source and © Allposters. Right photo source and © Shiprock Gallery, Santa Fe.
The painting is a total triumph of texture, color, form and feeling, precisely as Abstract Expressionist paintings are supposed to be. Abeyta essentially “wove” together a multitude of separate strands, colors, consistencies and types
of paint to present his own modern-day interpretation of a historic Navajo weaving. It is at once a brilliant design idea and a completely masterful and original painterly execution. It introduces the revolutionary thought of weaving with paint or re-imagining a traditional, historic Navajo artistic medium (hand-woven wool on a hand-made wooden loom as
seen below) with another, more modern composition of inter-related and intersecting drips and streaks of Jackson Pollock-like abstract color. Abeyta very skillfully manipulated the actual textures, types and thicknesses of the individual colored paint layers themselves from glossy to matte from thick to thin to convey a sense of depth and intertwining. It would be a fascinating exercise indeed, if it could ever be done, to see how an actual hand-woven
Navajo textile executed in wool to this same exact design and size would look.
One could say that in a certain way Tony Abeyta was destined to be a great artist.
His Father, Narciso Platero Abeyta or "Ha-So-De" was an extraordinary painter and
two of his older sisters, Pablita and Elizabeth were accomplished artists as well.
The painting was created in multi-colored oil and latex paints on canvas and measures an impressive 72” in height by 65” in width. It is signed "Tony Abeyta" in his cgaracteristic stylized signature at the lower right and it is also titled and signed again on the verso. We purchased this painting from Tony Abeyta at his Santa Fe studio in 2008 just after it was completed. The painting went directly from his studio wall to our wall in 2009 and it has remained there in the exact same place ever since. It is essentially in "like new" original condition.
The painting is unframed as we felt that framing it was unnecessary and might actually detract from its freshness and wall to wall boundary busting immediacy. Its exuberance shouldn’t be contained in any way, in our view, it’s literally bursting out at the seams with energy and vitality. This painting is an outstanding, unique and particularly significant work by one of America’s finest and most imaginative Contemporary Native American artists with a long and distinguished career behind him and a long and distinguished career ahead of him.
Price available upon request
